


Expedient Exaggeration

by dellaxstreet



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Childhood Trauma, Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, It's never just three, Jealous Q, Jealous Sherlock, M/M, One-Sided James Bond/John Watson, Protective Mycroft, Psychological Warfare, Q is a Holmes, Repressed Memories, Slow Burn, This is gonna be dark kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:51:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9272594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellaxstreet/pseuds/dellaxstreet
Summary: John paused to remind himself that taking off the head of the British government was a very good way to end up in a dark hole from which no one could extract you, excepting Sherlock, who would take at least a week. Exhaling a slow breath, he bit back every vicious retort he wanted to offer and instead asked, “Who’s the blonde?”“Insurance. You seem to be out an assassin at the moment, after all. I thought I might provide you with one.”Post-TLD divergent, based on a simple premise: Three might be a comforting number, but the universe is rarely so lazy.





	1. That wasn't very sporting

There were moments when time itself seemed to slow to the consistency of molasses, so sharply defined and yet eking by at such a crawl that it was impossible to escape the nearness of them. John Watson had experienced several such moments in his lifetime, and it was rather amazing how many of them, now he thought of it, had involved staring down the barrel of a gun.

It was equally amazing – in fact, it was downright ironic – how many of these moments had involved a member of the Holmes family. Of course, the Holmes in question was usually the one either guarding his back or getting him into the situation in the first place.

Having a Holmes point a gun dead at him, and knowing, with absolute certainty, that she wasn't going to hesitate as she pulled the trigger? This was decidedly new.

By the time adrenaline flooded acrid into his mouth, the air had torn apart with the sound of the gunshot. It wasn’t neat, and it wasn’t quiet. They never were, not in real life. No matter how many of them he witnessed, John thought, it was still like standing too close to a thunderclap, and waiting for the lightning to rip into you. Even as his body jerked, muscle memory compelling him to dodge, he knew. It was too late to escape. No one could outrun bullets.

Films always got both those things wrong. Gunshots were jarring, they hummed down your nerves and stayed with you. And you never had enough time to get out of the way.

By the time pain blossomed in the muscle of his arm, searing agony that said he’d just earned a new scar for his bicep, John had processed two things. One, Eurus Holmes clearly didn’t want him dead, or she’d have continued to aim at his head, because he’d been at her mercy. And two –

There was another gunshot splitting the air, this time coinciding with shattered glass. The sliding door behind him flew open, and through it barreled a stranger who hurtled him out of the way, with such force that he struck the floor, hissing in pain. Palms colliding with the wreckage, John pushed himself up onto one elbow, watching as the stocky figure aimed several additional shots at Eurus’s retreating back.

The bullets went wide, one lodging in the doorway. The man above him cursed, his entire being tensing as he started after her. He moved like a predator, all coiled strength and vicious intent – SIS, John wondered? Spots danced across his vision. His good arm still shook enough that, after a moment, he collapsed backward onto the floor.

“What the bloody hell is MI-6 doing here?” he slurred aloud, before the obvious answer came to him. “Mycroft.”

The stranger loped back in, pale eyes intent on him as held out a hand up. “Yes, Mycroft.” The man’s clipped tones did not indicate any particular _warmth_  toward the eldest Holmes. “I believe he’d like to speak to you.” Having steadied John, the man offered him a mobile.

“Hello, Doctor,” came an all-too-familiar voice, spilling from the receiver. “I trust you’re not too badly injured?”

“Just a graze. You lied right to my face about her, Mycroft.”

“Technically, I did no such thing. You asked me if I had a _brother_ secreted away in some tower, and in fact, I had no such thing. As you can plainly see, Eurus is very much female.”

John paused to remind himself that taking off the head of the British government was a very good way to end up in a dark hole from which no one could extract you, excepting Sherlock, who would take at least a week. Exhaling a slow breath, he bit back every vicious retort he wanted to offer and instead asked, “Who’s the blonde?”

“Insurance. You seem to be out an assassin at the moment, after all. I thought I might provide you with one.”

At the edge of John’s vision, the man in question was reloading his gun, with the cool efficiency of a man who very likely had no compunctions about killing if called upon to do so. It reminded him of Mary, if he was honest – a thought which sent a sharp pang through him, though it didn’t derail his thoughts, not the way it might have not long ago.

“How long am I borrowing him for, then?” he asked then. It was better not to argue the particulars of why he was suddenly being assigned what amounted to an armed guard, not when the obvious implication was that he’d be spending time with Sherlock, and if he accepted it, then Sherlock would have additional protection by extension. Mycroft never did do a thing straightforwardly if he could come at it sideways and through subterfuge.

“Until such time as I deem the East Wind to no longer be a threat, Doctor Watson. Now. I believe my brother will be arriving at your location shortly, as will an ambulance. I intend to meet you at the hospital. Do try to stay alive until then.”

The line went dead. Rolling his eyes, John turned to hand the phone back to the other man, studying him for a moment before he asked, “What’s your name?”

The magazine slid back in sharply as the other man reloaded, icy gaze flickering up for a moment. “Bond. James Bond.” He offered a smile as he slid smoothly from his perch, and what seemed to be a second, more appreciative look to follow the first, hand extended. “It’s a pleasure.”

John blinked, shaking left-handed before he sank onto the sofa, asking, “Don’t suppose you’ve got a knife to go with that, have you?”  


Bond’s smile gained an edge for a moment as he nodded. “Allow me.”

Before the motion quite processed in John’s brain, the other man was shrugging out of his jacket and undoing the buttons on his shirt, sliding it neatly off his shoulders, leaving only a vest underneath. It did, he had to admit, reveal that the MI-6 agent was impressively well-muscled, though he wasn’t quite certain who on _earth_ attempted to flirt in the flat of a murdered person while surrounded by broken glass when one party was bleeding from a gunshot wound.

Producing a knife from God-knows-where – honestly, John hadn’t been paying attention – Bond cut strips of the shirt and turned to bind his arm. “You may have to instruct me, _doctor,”_ came the murmur, low and, all right, definitely flirtatious.

This was not happening. “That’s, er, that’s fine,” he managed, watching until it was done, and trying not to pay attention to the fact that the other man was apparently taking it as an excuse to let his touches linger. Was he some kind of magnet for violent lunatics? And why him? Did people have a sign up somewhere that read ‘Assume John Watson likes men’?

Naturally, this was when the front door crashed open and Sherlock skidded in. “John! John, what happened?” The taller man was on him before he could even draw breath to answer, shoving Bond aside and examining the wound on his arm before turning to survey the room. He paused only a moment before rounding on Bond, rolling his eyes as he snapped, exasperation in every word, “Don’t tell me Mycroft called _him_ in on this!”

Hand sliding quite deliberately across John’s shoulder in a way that made Sherlock’s eyes narrow, the agent rose, offering an unapologetic smirk. “You could try asking him yourself. I certainly wasn’t involved.”

“Insufferable _prat,_ ” came Sherlock’s answering hiss, and for a moment, it was difficult to tell whether the insult was meant to be directed towards Bond or his elder brother.

“I don’t disagree with you. But then. He is your brother.” _And therefore your problem rather than remotely being mine,_ the agent’s words seemed to imply, eyes bright with sharp amusement as he stepped back, shoes crunching over the blunt edges of the shattered door, taking up a perch at their perimeter.

“Not to interrupt, but would you mind telling me what the hell’s going on?” John shifted, hoping the ambulance which had been promised would arrive sooner rather than later. “You and Mycroft both make clams look slack-jawed sometimes, I’ve gotten used to that, but Sherlock, you could’ve _mentioned_ you had a sister!”

The reaction he received was one which he was not expecting: Complete and utter bewilderment. Sherlock blinked at him as though baffled, the same way he blinked when someone expected him to observe a social ritual he considered so far outside his realm of experience that he might as well have been asked to partake in the day-to-day activities of Martian culture. “Tell me exactly what she said. Every word.”

John tried to think back, though the pain in his arm throbbed insistently, making his vision dance every now and then. “She brought up _the other one_  – the other Holmes. I’d had a conversation with Mycroft about it the other day, asked him if he had a secret brother locked away in a tower, which he denied, but I hadn’t told her anything about it. And then she said you must have told her, but you’d only met her once – and then she said she’d met you before that. She was Faith. And… she said a _mutual friend_ put her in touch with Smith, to get her the note.”

“Moriarty! The note, it had words written on it, in ultraviolet ink. The same thing as the message. ‘Miss me?’”

“Maybe, maybe not. But that’s not all. She said her name was Eurus, and it meant the East Wind. That her parents liked silly names… like Mycroft, and Sherlock. She asked me how I didn’t guess that the secret Holmes brother was a secret sister all along. And then she shot me.”

Sherlock had gone very still, fingers steepled, eyes wide, as the words washed over him. John remembered what he’d been told, about Mycroft’s stories of an East Wind, ravaging and destructive, and wondered if this was the source of it. But there was still no recognition to be found on the detective’s face.

“Sherlock, there’s something else. When I told Mycroft he’d lied to me about a secret brother, he told me that he hadn’t _technically_ lied, because she wasn’t a brother at all.”

That snapped him out of it – gaze gone sharp again, as his hand darted into his pocket, fumbling for his mobile. “I haven’t got a sister, of course I haven’t got a sister, she’s working for Moriarty, this is all a plot to get inside my head again. I’m sure my brother’s _very_ pleased with his little joke!”

John opened his mouth to reply, to ask if perhaps Sherlock didn’t remember her for some other, more sinister reason, if there were things Mycroft hadn’t told either of them, when the distinct sound of sirens drew in close, enough that he was certain the ambulance had pulled up. At the edge of his vision, Bond straightened, moving to reclaim his suit jacket and tuck it over the outline of his gun.

“We’ll work it out, like we always do. But can we do it after I’m in hospital?”

If there was an East Wind coming, then he’d need all his strength.


	2. Games? Must we?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we delve into the world of flashbacks regarding Eurus, and introduce a certain fourth party...

* * *

**_Ten Years Ago_ **

* * *

It was terribly difficult to get away from the clichés in London, wasn’t it? No matter what the course of life dictated, inevitably there would come a night when something momentous happened, and it was indeed a dark and stormy night. There was a reason that such tropes had been invented, other than stirring the collective imagination, probably, but it was still irritating, Sherrinford thought, eyeing the window of his flat as rain lashed furiously down it.

The soft blink of an alarm in the lower quadrant of his laptop screen, for instance, was more than enough to alert him that someone had disabled the security safeguards on his front door without his personal input. This was accompanied, not long afterward, by the absence of sound which generally accompanied the footsteps of someone trying to go unseen.

“Come back when it’s sunny,” he said, without looking up. “You’re being incredibly banal.”

There came the soft _click_ of a safety being slid back, and then – a laugh from the shadows behind him. “You’re not surprised to see me? Why must you ruin my fun?”

“I have reports to finish. Possibly the world’s infrastructure to topple if I get exceptionally bored, but thus far, I’ve done all I can to resist. I don’t have time for you to slink into my house and intimidate me because you’ve been revisiting Gothic literature, Eurus.”

Another several steps, and there was the cold sensation of a gun pressed against the back of his neck, sending a shudder down Sherrinford’s spine unbidden. He narrowed his eyes, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a fingertip as he closed the window full of data sets and lowered the laptop screen. “What is it that you want, then?”

“I’ve missed you, brother. Haven’t you missed me?”

“Would you prefer a lie, or the truth?”

Her laughter was richer this time, though it was impossible to shake the sinister undertones it contained. The gun withdrew, allowing him to set the laptop down on the coffee table and turn, even as Eurus walked around and dropped down to face him, head cocked while she studied him. “I always liked that you offered. Even if it meant that whoever you were lying to would see the lie coming, it’s still so _thoughtful_ , isn’t it? So unlike our brothers.”

“So this is about them? I see. You can leave me a forwarding address if you like, I’ll try and get Mycroft to write.”

Grinning, she leaned forward, and Sherrinford cursed himself for giving anything away. She’d caught it – the way he hadn’t mentioned Sherlock writing letters, as though he wasn’t in any state to write letters at the moment. Sherlock, whom she always seemed so fixated on from a distance, even though she never did go near. Sherlock… whose mind was forever trying to put itself back together, without having all the pieces.

“Where’s the other one, then? Don’t tell me he’s taken a turn for the worse! I’d hate to think that anything’s happened. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

 _Give away nothing._ _With her, every word is a weapon._ “The way you’re wasting both of ours? Waving guns at family members in lieu of conversation seems like a hobby with a limited shelf life, and I really do have work to do.”

The expression on Eurus’s face could only be described as a rictus smirk, ear-to-ear and unanchored, as she rose to her feet, gun gripped neatly in one hand. The other, she reached out to pat his cheek gently, like a parent offering indulgent affection to a child. “You never disappoint me. Mycroft’s so predictable, and poor Sherlock’s so frail, but you’ve never let me down. I’m so very hurt, to think you haven’t missed me.”

“And I’m touched. But I was also much more efficient without the midnight chats at gunpoint.” Raising his eyebrows, he pulled away from her grasp. “Are you sure you won’t tell me where to send postcards?”

“I’ll find you. Until next time.”

Sherrinford held quite still, waiting for the sound of her footsteps to retreat and the door to shut. Then he reached, carefully, for his laptop, pulling up the surveillance feed from his front door, just to confirm that she had gone out of it and walked away – that she wasn’t coming back.

Then, and only then, did the tension which had been coiling in his body release itself, in one long shudder. Forcing himself to draw in long, even breaths, he marshaled his composure, gaze fixed on the nearby panes of glass, the downpour outside. _It was a dark and stormy night, complete with villainous gloating and a monologue. How utterly predictable of her, let alone myself._

Finally, he dug out his mobile and dialed, breath catching until he heard an answer at the other end. “She was here, Mycroft. She wanted to know where he was.”

Silence, then: “I’m sending a car.”

* * *

_**Eight Years Ago** _

* * *

  


Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, the taste of it sickly and metallic, enough to make his stomach roll. Which was unfortunate, given that the sound of his groan was enough to prompt the man standing over him to lash out again, landing another heavy blow to his torso.

How long had he been here, Sherrinford wondered? His body was one massive bruise. No, worse than that, he thought, cataloguing. It was more like a military academy, and bits of him definitely kept passing out.

The manacles at his wrists were a bit much. Very medieval, as was stringing him up from the ceiling, though at a certain point, it had its advantages. Chief among them right now was that his arms had gone numb, and he could no longer feel the pain which throbbed down his forearm, from what was probably a broken bone.

The sound of unsheathing metal made his head come up, enough to see his captor select another knife. This one was smaller than the others, small enough that it was probably for something very specific.

“I assume that’s going under my fingernails?” Sherrinford’s voice came out hoarse, raw from overuse, but for now, he could still speak, and he intended to make the most of it. Especially given the irritation flickering over the man’s face. If he could just get himself taken out of the manacles, he might have more of a chance with both feet on the ground –

A dream. An impossible one. But one which was better than thinking about what was about to happen as he was backhanded, hard enough to make his jaw rattle.

“Shut up! You don’t get to talk. Not to me, not to her. Not at _all.”_

 _Not to her._ There it was again, that flicker of jealousy that had been present throughout his confinement. It was enough to make it a very easy target, when you thought about it. Was this what his brothers would do, he wondered? Find a weakness, exploit it? Knock villain off-balance, make daring escape, rinse, repeat?

This was why he spent his life behind a computer. He could do more damage that way than anyone else in his family combined, he’d wager, and he could do it in under an hour. Even Mycroft couldn’t match what he could potentially do if he ever decided to descend into criminality, which was probably why he was watched so closely. But out here, facing down someone who was determined to torture him to death, it was clear that they had learned a great deal more about how to actually slay dragons.

“I was only making conversation. Just like I was when she spoke to me. Though I don’t know how I could’ve avoided her – she does have a habit of turning up unannounced in the middle of the night –”

The pain was blinding as the man lashed out, digging the knife in his hand into Sherrinford’s shoulder. A shallow wound, he thought, absently, but anything into muscle _hurt._ Had been hurting, would continue to hurt. “And what the fuck was she doing in your flat? Well?”

He paused. “Would you prefer a lie or the truth?”

The knife twisted, but he’d struck a nerve, he could tell that much. _Just stall for time, maybe they’ll come. Mycroft will come._ Oh, how he wished he were absolutely certain about that – that he could be certain his brother would track them here in time. He could only pray that limitless resources truly meant limitless.

“The truth.” The man sneered at him, expression twisting with his disgust. “I’ll even go first, how’s that? Tell me the truth or I’ll kill you, because I’ve killed before, and I can do it again. I’ve killed for her!”

 _One of her flies._ Sherrinford nodded weakly. “She kept dropping by to catch up, said she missed me. I do wish she could pick less dramatic times to pop in, but I never seem to get a say in it. She’d always say I was the only one who never let her down.” Another pause, as the idea dawned on him. “Did you let her down, is that why you’re after me?”

“ _SHUT UP!”_

He was reeling from another backhand when the room lit up, a sudden flash that was accompanied by a flood of some sort of thick smoke. Instinctively, he sucked in a deep breath and held it, eyes squeezing shut. He knew a raid when he saw one, or couldn’t see one, as the case might be. He could do this, he could keep his eyes closed through the sounds of crashing furniture and struggling bodies, until all went quiet.

“Hello, Sherrinford.” A familiar voice joined him then, as the manacles holding him up came loose, hands on either side helping him down. When his eyes came open, he was leaning on a pair of soldiers in tactical gear, and looking up at Mycroft.

“I hope you took him alive,” he managed, wincing. “He said he’d _killed_ for her.”

“Not to worry. He will not be escaping me so easily.”

The smile on Mycroft’s face would have been frightening to just about anyone else who had a working nervous system, Sherrinford thought. Or even, perhaps, the good sense to know that nations could topple overnight and civilizations could burn for less.

Somehow, just then, it was comforting.


	3. I've never trusted neatness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summit of the Holmses, featuring: A great deal of exposition, and one unfortunate cliffhanger. More to come soon!

“How did this happen?” Q looked up from the footage he was studying in order to raise his eyebrows at Mycroft. On the laptop screen in his lap, Eurus slunk neatly in the direction of an ATM camera and turned toward the lens, blowing it a kiss before slipping into one of London’s few surveillance blind spots, vanishing completely.

Facial recognition was difficult to fool forever, even well-disguised, as was utterly avoiding cameras in a metropolitan area, but it gave her enough of a head start to make any sane man’s blood run cold. A few hours, in the hands of Eurus Holmes, was all the time she’d need to make all manner of hell break loose.

It was the sort of hell he’d been intimately acquainted with, once; after two years of helping to hunt her down, he’d learned the landscape of her mind in ways that not even Mycroft had. The oldest Holmes liked to deal in sidelong maneuvers and power plays, the shadow-world of politics and implication. In a certain way, it equipped the man to deal with someone like Eurus, but Q had always been the one capable of staying ahead of her.

His gift came of being as well-informed as possible, he’d said often enough – and right now, he was _woefully_ underinformed. Of course, he could have had the surveillance footage from the prison she was meant to be occupying, along with her psychological evaluations, at his fingertips, within a few minutes, but it was considered polite to ask.

“We don’t know.” The words sounded like they were being dragged out of Mycroft by force.

“One of the most dangerous people in the whole of Britain escapes custody right under your nose, and you _don’t know_?” Q’s eyebrows went up even further. Judging by the way that the other man shifted from one foot to the other, fingertips drumming on the handle of his umbrella, this was not a situation that made him any happier than it made anyone else. “I’ll be borrowing your security footage, then. And her evaluations.”

“You don’t have the clearance –”

“My clearance level is irrelevant, Mycroft. If you wanted to keep me out, you should have air-gapped the system. _Honestly._ ” Mouth curling up faintly in a smirk, Q went to work at the system’s firewall. It was, he had to admit, impressive, and the system itself was almost entirely self-contained. But it _did_ have an internet connection, and like a single crack through which light could slip, so too did he.

“I hate it when you do that,” Mycroft snapped, walking to the window at the sound of approaching sirens. “Ah. Sherlock and Doctor Watson have arrived.” Striding to the door, he leaned out and exchanged words with one of the men outside, presumably sending him off to have them shown in once the doctor had been treated.

“Have you decided whether or not to lie to him yet?” Q asked, when Mycroft returned to his seat. “Personally, I doubt he’ll believe whatever story you’ve concocted about why they put her away, though I suppose you could describe the Homicidal Triad and leave him to lie to himself. You’ll have to get past his thinking you’re a colossal arsehole first, however.”

Exhaling a slow breath, the oldest Holmes paused to study the ceiling, as though he were praying momentarily for strength. He kept his gaze fixed there for a long moment before returning it to Q, lip curling in a sneer. “When I want your opinions on how to handle Sherlock, I will ask for them, Sherrinford.”

“Careful now, Mycroft. Sherrinford Holmes has been dead for the last eight years. It’s Stuart, if you _must_. Personally, I prefer Q.” Furnishing his brother with the most innocent smile in his repertoire, he began running a program designed to scan security footage of Eurus’s cell for anomalies, and for the last time she had been present in it.

“I will not refer to you as a letter, quartermaster or not. Stuart.”

Silence fell between them then, nothing but the sounds of distant hospital machines in nearby rooms and the soft hum of a laptop to break it until Q leaned into the screen, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. A few rapid clicks to replay a section of the tapes had him sucking air in through his teeth as he looked up, dread coiling in his stomach. “Someone put the camera footage on a loop. It was collected over the course of several days, so you’d have to be very clever to spot it. Fortunately for us, I’m very clever.”

Both of them knew precisely what this meant. Someone had gotten inside the prison and, once it had been infiltrated, changed the security footage to cover Eurus’s escape. Given the extreme security measures she was kept under, almost no one had direct contact with her while inside. She could have been gone for _weeks_ , with no one the wiser.

“Heads will roll for this,” muttered Mycroft darkly, watching the loop restart itself from over Q’s shoulder.

A moment later, he straightened as the door to their room banged open to admit Sherlock. He was incapable of entering a room without a dramatic flourish of some kind, judging by the way that his coat swept out behind him. On his heels came a stocky man with graying hair and military posture who could only be Dr. John Watson, and bringing up the rear, with lean grace – “Bond? What on earth is Bond doing here?”

The operative furnished him with a sharp smile, pale gaze taking in the room with the kind of lazy efficiency which suggested he was noting exit and entry points before it settled on himself and Mycroft again, though he did not linger on the eldest Holmes long. “Good to see you too, Q. Did you miss me?”

Whatever else he might have said was cut off by Sherlock marching across the room to shove at his older brother, hard enough to knock him back a step. “What sort of joke is this, telling John that we have a secret sister? Going along with this lunatic’s designs, when she’s clearly working with Moriarty to get inside my head? Are you pleased with yourself?”

Reaching out for his arm, John tried to tug him back. “Sherlock! Calm down.”

“You’ve just been shot by a woman who’s inserted herself into both of our lives and into one of my _cases_ , John, I will not calm down!” Eyes narrowed, he eyed Mycroft. “Explain yourself.”

If Mycroft was left to explain this situation, Q reflected, then someone was going to get shot. And he wasn’t quite sure, as he eyed Bond’s perch by the window, that 007 could be counted on to step in before that happened. His orders might only cover _external_ threats to the Holmeses themselves. Letting the brothers shoot one another, for an assassin, could very well qualify as a good afternoon’s entertainment.

Shutting his laptop with a sharp snap, Q waited for all the eyes in the room to turn to him while he set it down and got up, holding a hand out to Sherlock’s companion. “You must be Doctor Watson. I’m the other, _other_ Holmes – Sherrinford. Well. Officially, I’m dead, which was a precaution we had to take, after Eurus was captured. She was always singularly fixated on me, in the time Mycroft and I worked to bring her in. These days, my name is Stuart Bradstreet, though I much prefer Q.”

By the window, Bond coughed, as if to hide a laugh. It occurred to Q, belatedly, that he’d never told the operative his real name, and suddenly he wished for the ability to erase the memories of incredibly nosy killers who were never going to let this go, as long as he lived.

To his credit, John shook his hand, though his expression was a bit incredulous. “Q, like the letter? So there are four of you? Are you _serious_? And why have I never met you before?”

“That’s simple. Mycroft is the British government, and I serve the portions of it which don’t officially exist. For that matter, neither do I.”

“There are not four of us!” Frankly, he was amazed Sherlock had managed to stay quiet this long. “There are three. There have always been only three Holmes children. Sherrinford is the youngest. He got into trouble trying to hack MI-5 a while back, and Mycroft used it as an excuse to chain him to a life of public service as long as possible in order to atone for his crimes. He’s incredibly dangerous behind a computer, which is why he never gets out. Why _is_ he out, Mycroft?”

Rolling his eyes, Mycroft motioned for them to all sit down. “Because, brother mine, he is telling you the truth. Three is such a comfortable number for human beings, as we’ve always said, but it’s too neat. Things almost never stop at three, and our parents didn’t, either – they had four. Myself, you, Eurus, and Sherrinford. She spent a large portion of our childhoods in an institution, but I assure you, she is very real.”

It was almost as though it were possible to see the gears turning behind Sherlock’s sea-glass eyes, taking this information and applying it to what he had already gathered. The way he thought, Q knew, was to add up all the truths he had collected and try to make them form a cohesive whole, which was, sadly, not always the most efficient way to reach a real conclusion. Sometimes, all you could do was add up all the lies you knew existed, and subtract them from the truth.

“Hang on. So you’re saying that you’ve got a secret sister, who’s a _psychopath_ , and you’ve actually had her locked in a tower all these years, because you two what, put her there together? And Sherlock had no idea?” From the clench of muscle forming in his jaw, John disliked the idea immensely. “Why doesn’t he remember her, then? Why didn’t you tell him?”

The light went on, suddenly, behind Sherlock’s eyes. “You put her away while I was too much of a junkie to be of use to anyone, didn’t you.” It was not a question.

“Yes. We had hoped you would never know.”

This time, Sherlock turned, gaze falling on Q instead. His look was sharp, almost searching, but from the way his brows knit, he did not find what he wanted there. “Why don’t I remember her?”

“Would you prefer a lie or the truth?”

This was greeted with an eyeroll. “The truth, obviously.”

Mycroft shot him a glance sidelong which said clearly, _choose your words carefully._ Q knew, despite his great confidence in his brother’s intellectual faculties, that of the three of them, Sherlock had always been the most sensitive, the one with the heart easiest to bruise. Telling him too much could not only open old wounds, but be like a sledgehammer to his mind – it could bring down all of the walls at once.

“You know what the three childhood signs of psychopathy are, don’t you? It’s a theory that’s come under some dispute since, but they’re referred to as the Homicidal Triad.” Q studied his brother, watching those eyes work away, absorbing this. “There were signs that our sister was _different_ , in the way she had trouble relating to others. She’d copy my emotions, but she didn’t react genuinely, she merely emulated. Anything you told her was something she could use against you later, which was a trick I learned much sooner than other people did. Much sooner than you, Sherlock. The reason they took her away was that she began displaying those very definite signs, and she did so… in front of you.”

There was horror written on Dr. Watson’s face, indifference on Bond’s, and on Sherlock’s, there was something like dawning understanding, until finally, he whispered, “Redbeard.”

“Redbeard?” John blinked.

“His dog, when he was a child.” Unlike him, Mycroft had no compunction about lying to those close to him when he thought it was required. “A memory that, like all those of Eurus, Sherlock has repressed up until now. Hence all of my tales of the East Wind – I had to be certain such things were well and truly buried in my brother’s psyche. Though it seems that some things were not buried far enough.”

Now Sherlock was pacing, back and forth across the limited space, shaking his head. “But what does she want? If it’s Sherrinford she’s fixated on, why come after me?”

Q considered this, then answered, “I’m meant to be dead. She can’t take her revenge on me, but she can go after the living. And if you were threatened, Mycroft would certainly come to your aid...”

Cold certainty washed over him in that moment. Eurus was clever enough to know that Mycroft would want to hide him from her, above all else. If she didn’t believe he was really dead, then she would also know that he was likely to be brought in if she escaped. Regardless of this fact, attacking Sherlock’s closest friend without true intent to kill him would inevitably redirect them to a hospital, which Mycroft would have chosen the moment he realized what had happened. This would force a summit of the Holmses, and offer the opportunity to come after them all.

Sherlock had stilled in his pacing, eyes wide in the same realization. “This was her plan. She’s coming after us here.”

Languidly, Bond uncurled himself from his perch, like a lion moving after a long nap in the sun. It had been easy to forget he was there, with the way he kept his silence, but then, his purpose was to wait for moments like this. Moments when a trained assassin suddenly became eminently useful. Pulling a gun from his waistband, he offered it to John, smirking as he asked, “Are you up for this, _doctor_?”

“I’d say that we’re about to find out,” John muttered, as the lights overhead flickered. “How much damage could she do on her own, exactly?”

“Let me put it this way, Doctor Watson: Anyone outside this room who might have been armed when she entered the building is now potentially our enemy. The weapon of a Holmes is the _mind –_ and in Eurus’s case, hers is everyone else’s.”

Q pressed himself into a corner, while Sherlock took up a position to one side and Mycroft slid the handle of his umbrella free, revealing first the long glint of a sword blade and then the muzzle of a gun once its bayonet was gone. John took up guarding the window, while Bond crouched at the door, waiting.

A moment later, the lights went out.


	4. We'll laugh in the car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Moneypenny is a badass, Q and Bond have a chance to... bond, and the game's afoot.

There were times, when he had his hands wrapped around a firearm and Sherlock was settled firmly at his side, that John wondered how his life had become so impossible. If anyone had told him, five years ago, that he’d one day find himself locked in a hospital room with his crime-solving lunatic of a best friend, a man who apparently ran the entire British government from his armchair, a hacker who did not technically exist, and a man who was in all likelihood a trained government assassin, he’d have said they’d gone round the bend.

Yet here he was, feeling the faint ache of his wounded arm, where the stitches were still fresh, contemplating how he was about to tear them wide open on the recoil, and steeling himself against it. Somehow, he’d found himself barricaded in with three Holmes brothers, where this morning there had only been two, while a fourth Holmes’s assault grew ever closer.

“D’you ever get the feeling,” John asked, turning slightly to catch Sherlock in his peripheral vision, “that our lives are completely mad?”

“I thought that was the part you liked most!” In spite of the gloom, which kept flickering as the backup generators did their work, he could see the grin which had worked its way onto Sherlock’s face, stretching his expression into something boyish. In the corner, face lit by the faint glow of a laptop screen, Q typed frantically.

“What are you doing?” John asked, even as he winced – that was a definite gunshot, at the end of the hall.

“Using social media to get word out about what’s happening here to the police. Someone’s jamming cell phone signals, but some hospital equipment has to be networked, and that’s running off the generators, so, simply put – I’m inventing my own wifi. Won’t last forever, but it might help.” Pushing his glasses back up his nose with a fingertip, Q shot him a smile, and returned to his task.

More gunshots sounded, drawing closer this time – one, two, three, four – and then they were just outside the door. Leaping down from his post at the window, John raised the weapon in his hand, even as Bond did the same, both of their gazes fixed on the entrance to the room. Through the crack of faint light outside, the sight of a body falling across it was clearly visible.

The door flew open, silhouetting a female figure there.

“I thought you boys could use a bit of backup. It’s a real _mess_ out there, I wouldn’t go out just yet – oh, hullo, James.” The woman in question offered a wide smile, stepping into the light as one of the fluorescents flickered on long enough to illuminate her. Tall and dark-skinned, with wild ringlets and clothing so neatly tailored that it was difficult not to stare, she seemed to be inviting any onlooker to stare at her, rather than the gun held capably in her hands.

“Moneypenny?” Gaze lingering appreciatively for a moment, Bond relaxed, before nodding at John to do the same. Whoever this woman was, she must be on their side.

“Is that you, Q?” she asked, stepping further into the room, before shooting a sidelong glance at the eldest Holmes and sighing. “Mycroft. I assume the reason that M sent me down here to stop a madwoman is that something’s gotten away from you?”

Watching Mycroft react to her was rather like watching a rooster fluff up to twice its normal size, and John barely resisted the urge to laugh. “More people named after letters, fantastic. You must all be MI-6, I take it?”

Sherlock waved his hands airily and stepped forward. “Yes, yes, that’s all very boring. Did you see a woman out there, or were you too small-minded and distracted by the armed gunmen to notice anything of importance? Be quick now, we don’t have much time.”

A grin worked its way onto this Moneypenny’s face as she studied Sherlock. “Charming, aren’t you? No, there was no woman, only half a dozen armed men, and the two guards on your door, who seem to have decided to turn double agent. If someone else was here, she was gone by the time I arrived.”

People who weren’t fazed by Sherlock and were not either insane (as was probably the case with Bond) or related to him (as was clearly the case with Mycroft and Q) were few and far between. Silently, John revised his estimation of her to something even higher than previously, unless, of course, she turned out to also be insane. Then he would be very disappointed. After all, the supply of capable, gorgeous women who could handle Sherlock Holmes had to be a limited one.

“Stop staring and get on with doing something useful, John,” came the sudden snap from beside him. Speaking of putting up with Sherlock Holmes – John had forgotten his tendency to become annoyed by any hint of a dating life. The only exception to this had been Mary, and Mary was, as he thought with a faint pang, gone now.

Turning, John redirected his attention to Bond. “What do you think the likelihood is that there are more of them outside?” he asked, nodding at the window. “Plenty of room across the street to set up a sniper’s perch. I’d feel better if we had an exit that was less exposed.”

The smirk which the operative gave him was sharp as he stepped nearer, seeming to lean unnecessarily close in order to study the same vantage point John looked from. Their shoulders brushed for a moment, while Bond’s pale eyes studied the distant shapes of buildings, as though mapping them out.

“That is _not_ what I meant, John!”

John ignored him. “Well?”

“Service exit, perhaps? There must be some way to commandeer an ambulance.” Bond looked to Mycroft then, as if to say that, if anyone could pull off such a thing, it would be the oldest Holmes. Where he wanted things done, after all, a great many doors opened, and people asked very few questions.

Moneypenny, who had taken up murmuring in low voices with Q, looked up then. “Seems a sensible plan… which is what worries me. Bond has never had a sensible plan in his life.”

Beside her, Q snorted. “I’d be suspicious, if I were you.”

“Be that as it may, we cannot stay here. There are a great many dead men in the corridor, Eurus continues to remain at large, and the police are on their way. I’d rather not deal with the police just now, if it’s all the same to you.” Mycroft pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “They give me a headache on principle.”

The sharp snap of a hammer sliding back into place broke the air, as Bond stepped toward the door. He seemed to have woken from some vaguely hibernatory state, as though some reserve of deadly energy had been tapped, and now every motion was deliberate. Hand on the doorframe, he opened it far enough to lean out and study the corridor, before saying, voice low, “Clear. We should divide the targets, if the goal is three birds with one stone.”

Moneypenny looked as though she were about to ask if he’d been replaced by an alien replicant, from the bemusement on her face, when Bond added, smirk curling the edges of his mouth, “I ought to take Stuart with me, don’t you think? He’s the most likely to be shot outright.”

Q blinked rapidly. “No. Absolutely not. I will not have 007 assigned to harass me – I’d rather take my chances with Eurus, if it’s all the same to everyone.”

“Fortunately for everyone, you do not have a say in this matter, Stuart. Loathe as I am to admit it, Bond is correct. You are most likely to be targeted first. Sherlock and John will go with Miss Moneypenny and begin an investigation under her watchful eye, while I locate the nearest bunker. Is that clear?”

“Am I required to be civil?”

“Moderately, yes.” Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Now. I assume you know how to commit grand theft auto, Mr. Bond?”

The smirk on the operative’s features spread slowly, until it looked like the sort of expression which might be the last thing a canary saw shortly before a cat descended upon it. John was suddenly very grateful that he and Sherlock had been assigned the protection detail who was pleasant and capable of going toe-to-toe with his partner in crime-solving, as opposed to the man who seemed to be taking delight in the prospect of criminality.

“I have some idea about it, yes, sir.” Bond nodded.

“The trail’s growing _cold!”_ snapped Sherlock, darting for the door, only to have Moneypenny slide neatly around to stand in front of him. Letting out a huff, he folded his arms, leaning in. “The game is afoot, there is a psychopath on the loose, and the longer you impede me, the longer she will have to wreak havoc on the general population. Why the hell are you standing in my way?”

She offered him a beatific smile, looking for a moment as though she were contemplating kissing his cheek from the way she leaned, before stepping backward. “I have a source we ought to go and meet. Reliable intelligence says that your sister was an associate of Jim Moriarty’s, and if that’s true, then someone who was on the inside is our best opportunity to understand what might have happened, don’t you think?”

There was a moment when John thought Sherlock might crack his jaw with how hard he gritted his teeth. It took physical effort for him to grind out, “I agree,” before he paused and, eyes lighting up with understanding, added, “No. You can’t mean her.”

John blinked, uncomprehending. “Who’s her?”

The pitying look he received was a familiar one, but no less pleasant this time than it had been the first. “Do keep up, John. Whom are we aware of who worked inside Moriarty’s network but was removed from it and has been at large ever since, kept suspiciously far below the radar?”

The pieces snapped together with an unpleasant lurch then. Every time she turned up, things went wrong in a way that was truly indescribable, except to say that, for all his talk of encouraging Sherlock to go and be with her, that didn’t mean John himself actually wanted to be in a room with her. Something about the woman made him want to bolt – it was the way she seemed to see straight through other human beings, and not in the way Sherlock did, either. His way was gentler. Hers was open heart surgery.

“Not Irene Adler! She’s a criminal.”

“And a very valuable asset to the British government, which rather outweighs the rest, don’t you think? I’ll arrange the meeting on the way, while you boys set about getting us that ambulance. I assume you can do that, can’t you? Clever things that you are.” Moneypenny beamed in a way that continued to be the furthest thing from innocent.

“Let’s get on with it then, shall we? Preferably before we’re all forced to make written statements down at Scotland Yard whilst drinking sub-par coffee beneath dim fluorescent lighting.”

John drew in a deep breath, nodding, and followed Sherlock out the door, watching Moneypenny lead the way neatly past fallen bodies in the hallway as though this were an ordinary occurrence. She was either insane or had an iron spine on her, and he still honestly couldn’t tell which.

“Stop staring and focus, John!” came the hiss in his ear, as Sherlock leaned over to whisper. “Eurus is connected to Moriarty. I knew that he would make his move eventually, and now he has. He’s set my sister on me.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re paranoid?”

“No, why? Have you heard something?” The detective’s mouth twitched into a smile, and then he straightened. “You should phone Molly. We may be away for quite some time.”

_Rosie._ John nodded, fishing his phone out of his pocket, and sighed. “Only in my life would I have to make a phone call that says ‘hullo, could you watch my daughter for a few days, my best friend’s secret crazy sister’s broken out of prison and she’s trying to kill us, so I’ve got to go see a dominatrix about it and then try to put her back. Don’t forget that she likes the stuffed penguin the best.’ Honestly, Sherlock – d’you ever get the feeling this is all completely mad?”

“All the time. It’s really quite good, isn’t it?”

John paused, staring at the phone in his hand, and lifted his gaze to Sherlock’s, before he found laughter bubbling helplessly up his throat. “You’re right, it really is!”

“Think of it as insanity, with brief periods of sanity, then. Rosie’s a brief period of sanity – and I’m quite certain that the stuffed penguin is nearly indestructible, so it will be there when we return.”

A moment of silence passed between them, during which John paused in front of the ambulance, studying him. A slow smile worked its way onto his face, broadening into a grin, while Sherlock tried to duck away, shaking his head. “No, no, you can’t get out of this, that was actually quite sentimental, and I’m not letting you forget it.”

“In the future I’ll do my best to be an arsehole then!” offered Sherlock, picking the lock on the back doors, before swinging them open and sliding in. Moneypenny lowered her weapon and strode back toward them from the service ramp, eyebrows raised at this particular declaration.

“I have absolutely no doubt about that,” John said, shaking his head in amusement, and shut the doors behind them.

 

* * *

 

“Where to, then?” Bond asked, turning to glance at Q, who was seated somewhat sullenly in the passenger seat. “You must have some sort of bolt-hole.”

What he meant, of course, was that there must be several. This was because he had never succeeded in finding Q’s actual residence, a fact which was verified by the footage of Bond stumbling across the deterrent systems in Q’s dummy flat, which had been deeply amusing, but also irritating. After the story about the man breaking into M’s place with reckless abandon, measures had been necessary, and had only grown with the assassin’s determination.

Why Bond was so determined to work out where he lived was something he had never divulged, though Q suspected it had something to do with being unable to back down from a challenge. Once set on a task, the man was single-minded in a way that few people were, which made him a deeply efficient killer and a particularly effective field agent, someone who did not give up until his objectives were achieved. It also made him a deeply irritating coworker.

Mentally calculating the likelihood that he’d need anything from his primary residence, Q decided that one of the satellite flats would suit his needs and gave directions calmly to an apparently abandoned building in South London which was, in reality, one he owned outright. It was the simple art of hiding in plain sight – no one would look here, and signs about hazards kept most who might attempt to stay for a night away.

If Bond was impressed by the layers of electronic security, he gave nothing away, except a mildly amused eyebrow raise when he was declared “and guest” so that he could bypass a need for retinal identification.

“We may not be entirely safe here. Eurus is clever enough to find a way around a great deal of problems, including electronic security measures, though I do have a self-contained grid and a generator, so cutting the power won’t help – she’d have to try something with an EMP to come close to cutting us off.” Sinking into an armchair, Q studied Bond with raised eyebrows. “I am not fixing you a drink.”

“Such hospitality. I’d almost think you weren’t happy to have me here, Stuart. Or is it Sherrinford?” There was amusement in those pale eyes as the operative walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of scotch, before returning to drop down into a seat on the sofa. “You never did tell me what your name was.”

“Why should I have? I rather think our relationship consists of you enlisting me in insubordination at every turn and then having it swept under the rug afterward because it winds up preventing some massive catastrophe. Oh, and let us not forget your incredible determination to destroy my equipment on a constant basis. You have as much respect for technology as a bull does for the contents of a china shop, Bond.”

Bond, curse him, smiled at that. As though it were all some sort of compliment. His smiles always seemed a bit too sharp, like if he bared his teeth he’d be giving himself away as a predator. They held all the lazy, threatening amusement of one on the prowl sometimes, certainly. The expression was, without fail, magnetic, which was of course his intent. Sometimes Q wondered how many people had fallen into the trap of thinking such a smile was harmless, only to pay the price later.

007 was never harmless, not even when you’d knocked him unconscious.

The man was trained to read people for a living, and under ordinary circumstances, Q was much better at shoring himself up. He could deflect calmly, give nothing away. But he could tell simply by the searching look in those icy eyes that he was being scrutinized, and something had been found.

“You like that about me. It keeps you on your toes. Life would be so boring if you didn’t have me asking you to undermine M in the middle of an operation, don’t you think?”

The urge to throttle the man warred with something else, something which felt almost alien until he realized that Bond had gotten up and was standing closer, leaning to bracket his body in the armchair. This close, suddenly Q wasn’t sure if he wanted to shove him away violently and tell him to sod off, go and try that with the twelfth blonde this month, or if he wanted to lean up, because he was right, of course he was right.

“It would. But it would also be boring if you got what you wanted all the time, don’t you think?” Ducking out from under Bond’s arm, Q pushed him backward, shaking off the light-headed feeling which persisted for a moment while he turned his back and took a few more steps.

There was laughter in Bond’s voice as he answered, “It certainly would be.”

 

* * *

 

Into the lobby of an expensive Paris hotel walked John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, and Eve Moneypenny, headed straight for the elevators. Their goal was to get to the penthouse, where their contact awaited them, no doubt – from the speed of their strides, it was a meeting meant to happen soon.

Seated in an armchair in the lobby, behind her newspaper, Eurus took note of this. _Irene Adler, possible former romantic attachment, ex-operative in network. Control – weak point. Remove as soon as possible. Leverage._ Dear little brother was looking for answers, and he was almost in the right place.

Well, he’d get more than he could stand soon enough.


End file.
